Third places are in the very end of the issues with socializing. Considering we already have parks, libraries, free weekly city events, etc. We’re not at a loss of places to hang out in, we have more stuff to do than ever before.
The issue with people is convenience. There are so many ways to entertain ourselves that don’t involve other people.
The way we see other people now is unpredictable, unreliable, and stupid. We don’t want to speak to cashiers, we don’t want to answer the phone, we don’t want to introduce ourselves at the start of the school year because we all have a terrible fear of socializing. Socializing is hard. If we can remove that element from our lives we will and have. Think about Uber eats, amazon prime, online dating. We don’t have to go anywhere, we don’t have to deal with other people, everything is delivered to us.
And if we don’t have to rely on other people we can be completely isolated. And then when we’re isolated we get to believe whatever we want because we’re never challenged. Now we get to cultivate our little castle to our liking. We don’t have to hear things that we don’t want to hear. We don’t have to interact with anything that we don’t want to interact with. We get to choose what we’re exposed to.
It’s even more exasperated by how much time is taken up from working and commuting now. Our time is very valuable so we seek convenience whenever it’s available. We don’t want to waste our time doing things that we might not enjoy. Because socializing is hard.
No amount of access to third places is going to solve that because it’s always going to be easier to stay home.
But its a trap. We are sheltering ourselves, yet we all know what sheltered people are like. They’re all fearful of everything, they’re resistant to change, they’re more bigoted, they’re anxious of normal everyday interaction. And we mostly agree that’s a bad thing. But here we are, doing it ourselves.
I guarantee most of us reading this have very little idea of what’s going on in our community. People are reaching out right now there are so many places and so many things we can do without money right now. But it’s more convenient to stay inside.
If we want more people to socialize. There are so many other things that we have to do before that but everything stems from convenience.
We would have to make it more convenient to go places after work, meaning that you’re reducing work hours or extending breaks.
We would have to make it more convenient to travel and access these places, meaning making traffic not so much of a hassle, offering some sort of public transportation thats reliable and cheap.
We would have to make it more convenient to socialize with people, maybe that would mean lowering the stakes of interactions. Every single time I hear someone talk about speaking to someone else they either feel like its tortuous small talk at best, or at worst think they are in front of a potential criminal that is going to harm them.
More importantly we would have to make certain things less convenient. The ability to use your smartphone, the ability to have everything delivered at your door, the ability to isolate yourself.
On a personal level these are all very tough things to give up because they also honestly do make our lives easier. That is to say we are overindulgent to the detriment of society.
So the lack of third spaces are tertiary to the main issue. If we were to increase the amount of third spaces by 50% tomorrow people would still choose their phones and computer. Hell, go into a club or a bar, or a sporting event. How many people are there and STILL on their phones? THAT’S THE THIRD SPACE.
Tl;dr: It’s not a lack of third spaces, it’s because you on yo damn fone all the time.
Comments
Yeah, how could having more third spaces possibly make going places after work more convenient.
Dude, it’s literally always been more “convenient” to isolate yourself. Jane Austin was writing about how hard it is to talk to people in 1813
Yeah, I think I agree. Suppose you open up this cafe, whatever. And you advertise it as a place to hang out, talk with people, meet new friends. If people come at all, they’re going to get their coffee or sandwich, then go sit in the corner, and put in their headphones. I’m not saying that’s wrong necessarily, it’s just the way it is.
There’s been a lot of talk about the new Chat GPT version 5.0. The tl;dr of it is 4o had a warm, interesting, and affable personality, and 5.0 has a personality of your average Redditor. So naturally people were a bit upset. And also naturally, the people who weren’t upset told the people who were to go outside, to stop treating an AI like your friend. Okay. Fair enough, but the people who rely on chat bots like this aren’t going to go out and make real friends when it’s taken away. They’re just going to retreat further into loneliness and isolation.
I don’t know what to do about it. The genie is already out of the bottle. I think social media, being constantly connected has fundamentally broke something in us. It’s probably one of those things we wish we could just uninvent.
Anti-Social doesn’t mean what you think it does. You are thinking asociality.
I love being on the phone in my third spaces 😉
Libraries are not an hang out spot. The whole point is to be quiet.
>We would have to make it more convenient to socialize with people, maybe that would mean lowering the stakes of interactions
Wow, it almost sounds like you’re describing… third places? Places where there’s incentive to show up, but no pressure to socialize if you don’t want to?
I agree with everything you’ve said, but I would also argue that the mere existence of third spaces isn’t enough.
It’s not enough to go to a one off community event or a park where you’re passing by people you’ll never see again. To build a social biome, people need to be repeatedly brought together and exposed to the same people over and over again to build familiarity.
I would also argue that the majority of the third spaces you listed are mostly confined to urban areas. If you live in a suburban or rural area, your choices of third spaces are usually a Walmart and an Applebys. And if you don’t have a vehicle? Forget it. If it’s not easy to get to a third place, it might as well not exist because as you’ve observed, people love convenience. No one wants to take 3 buses or sit in traffic for 40 minutes to go to a free weekly hang.
This is a multi-pronged issue. It’s not just the existence of third spaces. It’s the accessibility/affordability of those third spaces, it’s mindful city planning, and, as you said, it’s the willingness of people to actually prioritize connection over convenience.